Wednesday, March 30, 2016

At the end of the first day of treating Henry's scraped toe, all looked well. The wound was clean and disinfected, and Henry was safely sequestered from the girls. We continued disinfecting it morning and night.

But after a day, it was bleeding again. So we repeated the whole bath procedure. This morning it looked better, but there was still a small area that had reopened overnight. Time to haul out the big guns.

I went to the feed store and got Vetrap (a bandaging tape for animals) and antiseptic spray (way easier to apply than our bottle of hydrogen peroxide). I was planning on getting an antibiotic cream, but the feed store staff assured me that plain old Neosporin would do the trick.

Seriously, this is why I love living here. I can just walk into a local shop and know someone will be there to swap chicken raising tips with me.

Tomorrow, we strike at dawn. We ambush Henry, disinfect and apply antibiotics, and bandage him up.

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Normally I let the chickens out in the morning, and Brett closes them up at night. Today I was just dying for a few extra minutes of sleep, so my darling hubby offered to go let them out.

I should have known the universe would never let me sleep in...

A few minutes later, Brett came back in looking worried. We had our first chicken injury! Our rooster, Henry, had a bleeding toe. And as chickens do, the girls were pecking at the wound and making it worse.

A few minutes of frenzied chicken-blog-reading later, we had a plan. We filled a small container with warm, soapy water; found the hydrogen peroxide; grabbed some clean disposable towels; donned gloves; and went off to catch a rooster.

Not looking so cocky now, poor guy.

First, we sequestered him inside the coop, keeping him safe from the hens in the run. We washed his feet in the warm soapy water. Then we flipped him over and cleaned the injured toes with hydrogen peroxide to keep them from getting infected. He handed it like a champ!

We realized he'd gotten a lot of blood on his belly, and we were worried the hens would keep pecking at any red areas. So we gave him a little sponge bath to get him as clean as possible. Life lesson: we are not getting any more white chickens.

Once he was clean and dry, we needed a way to keep him safe but to let the hens back into the coop. We remembered that we still had a metal dog pen we used when Hermione was a puppy. Perfect! We set him up with some food and water where he could stay safely separate from the girls.

Henry in chicken solitary confinement.

Then we hung out in the coop for a bit to make sure the new arrangement was working out. After a few minutes everyone seemed to adjust to the new arrangement, and went happily about their own non-violent business.

We'll give him another cleaning this evening. Hopefully after a couple days of this, he'll be healed up enough to rejoin the ladies.

Monday, March 21, 2016

This was the last major design decision for the bathroom. That also made it one of the most difficult, because the tile needed to fit in with all the other pieces we already have. We started off by thinking we wanted a polished marble look on the floor, but we weren't sure what we wanted for the shower.

Since it's hard to get a good idea of what tile is really like online, we took a field trip to the tile showrooms. Super fun! (And since that's the kind of thing I think is fun now, I guess I'm officially old.)

Here's what we chose:

The tile on the left is the floor tile. It's a marble-look porcelain, with a rough brushed finish - we liked that a lot better than the polished, and I think it will be less slippery if the floor is wet. We'll use large 18"x18" tiles on the floor, and smaller squares for the floor of the shower.

The mosaic on the right will be the wall of the shower. It's recycled glass! This shows the mix of colors we picked, but instead of all squares we'll have a mix of various sized rectangles and squares.